Doubtful. Firstly we all know BFL's track record. If they say ASIC release is 12-16 weeks off you can read that as early 2013. BFL is in business to make a profit, so regardless of what BS is posted now, the units will NOT be inexpensive.

Secondly, for FPGA mining to "turn off", the difficulty will have to be so great that it costs more to mine in electricity then btc you can generate. Spartan 6 based miners are very efficient (and next generation even more so).

Thirdly, even if that electricity/btc point is reached, you can repurpose your FPGA miner. Worst case scenario is you can sell off the board to a third party to salvage the FPGA.

Lots of people said FPGA will kill off GPUs and you can clearly see that market is still flourishing.

Yeah but I don't see anyone CPU mining nowadays except BOTNETS so your point is moot.

I don't know of any presentable evidence but if you ask any GPU farm operator, they will tell you that running fans harder than 75-80% kills them.

As a farm operator who is mining on dozens of 5970s and 6990, continuously, with the fan speed manually forced at 100%, and with my oldest cards mining for as long as 18 months, let me tell you this claim is rubbish! (My fan bearing mechanical failure rate is 6%, which is low and expected.)

The claim that "running fans harder than 80% kills them" is spread by paranoid teenager geeks who covet their expensive gaming hardware without an understanding of the electronic and mechanical engineering work to control failure rates.

When a fan datasheet says it is designed for a lifetime of X years of continuous operation, it assumes a 100% duty cycle. In other words, it assumes the fan running at full speed. Fan manufacturers don't build fans and say "don't run it at full speed, or else..."

For example, if the datasheet says 2 years, running the fan continuously means it should last at least 2 years; running it every other day means you can prolong its lifetime to 4 years; etc. At 50% duty cycle ("50% fan speed"), the PWM voltage alternates between 0 and the nominal input voltage, the fan should last somewhere between 2 and 4 years (but much closer to 2 years because the bearings are still moving when the voltage is 0, just not quite as fast as full speed.) At 80% duty cycle, the fan should last between 2 and 2.5 years (but closer to 2 years).

To significantly improve the operating lifetime of a fan, you would have to run it at such a low duty cycle that it would be a bad idea for high-end graphics cards, because the cooling would be so much reduced that the high temperature would start seriously reducing the operating lifetime of all the other components on the PCB (capacitors, VRMs, GPU ASICs, etc).

Bottom line, fans are designed to run at 100% duty cycle. And there is no significant difference between 80 and 100%. Some people choose to run at 80% because it does not significantly decrease cooling (for the same reason that it does not significantly increase lifetime), but because the fan consumes 20% less power (and the fan is just a tiny fraction of the overall power consumed by the card).

(I choose to run at 100% because I pay a fixed price per electrical circuit, and the tiny extra power consumption costs me nothing.)

Well said.

Running fans at 100% for a year on 8 cards and they still turning like a boss.

No AV here, haven't used one in 8+ years. Last time I did, it didn't like the contents of my file server and never used one again.

Windows security is irrelevant, they are looking at market share. That's why osx was "secure" and is now trickling to becoming "unsecure."

Security by obscurity is delusion many people don't acknowledge.

I've downloaded literally 10's of terabytes of stuff of the internet. I've never lost my identity, never got hacked, never had toolbar problems.

A good nat router is simply amazing against penetration for the money and skill level needed to install. I used to browse in a VM. That become a pain. I just turned off all the potential problems (flash, java, active-x). Problem solved. Last time I checked... html doesn't ruin your day.

Well said. Same story here.

Nobody is out to get savvy users like me and you. No point being paranoid. Check out wilders security forums to see those guys using 10 bulletproof vests

If you trust me personally, I can confirm that at the time of this post, at least 75% of total claimed value (even including the identified fake ones) is present in Bitcoinica's accounts.

You have previously said that only 20% of total holdings were stolen. That was 20% of BTC. That leaves 80%, which is bigger than 75%.

The USD holdings should have been untouched. Let's assume a 50:50 split between USD and BTC deposits. That means that 80% of the 50% BTC should be available and 100% of the 50% USD. In other words: 50% + 40% = 90% of total deposits should be available.

Please someone explain how 90% has turned into 75%.

Further: claimed value should be less than deposited value, since not everyone will have claimed. That makes it easier to have enough funds to match the claims and yet you've only 75% of that lower number?

Distinctly worrying.

BTC value has gone up. That increases the price they pay to buy btc to pay to people.

And here I was sat thinking BTC value went up because they were buying BTC to give back to people ...

If they are verified then I would expect considerable assistance from GLBSE. We are paying for a fully released service now after all and upholding the integrity of the exchange is paramount to continued success/existence.